Monsignor James Supple is an icon at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church. For more than 50 years he has helped guide the spiritual lives of thousands of ISU students.

But today he has a cold.

“I just feel terrible,” he said. “I’ve been in bed all week, but that doesn’t seem to help much either, so then I get up to make sure I’m alive.”

A gray air pump hangs from his side, making a “puh, puh” sound as it pushes oxygen up through the tubes to his nose. It’s to slow down his “fibrosis of the lung,” one of several physical setbacks he’s experienced in the past two years. The founder of St. Thomas is celebrating his 90th birthday today.

“If I’d been born two days later, I’d be that leap baby,” he said jokingly. “I’d be a lot younger.”

His forehead and cheeks fold into hundreds of perfect wrinkles as he smiles and pats down his hair with an age-spotted hand.

When people talk about Supple, they smile, too.

“He has a way of making everything fun, an extremely positive attitude toward life,” said Father Everett Hemann, pastor at St. Thomas.

Joseph Stritzel remembers Supple’s fun-loving attitude well. The Ames resident was a college student when St. Thomas was founded in 1947, just across the street from the ISU campus. Stritzel, a World War II veteran from Eaton, Ohio, said he and his friends would walk from Friley Hall across the ice on Lake LaVerne as a short cut to daily Mass during the winter.

“[He] very much had a good rapport with students, empathy with students,” Stritzel said. “He was young and we loved him.”

Supple was assigned to Ames to begin a new parish for the Archdiocese of Dubuque. He was 35 years old and had been a priest for 11 years. As universities across the country filled with World War II veterans on the GI Bill, Supple was charged with creating a new community for the 1,154 Roman Catholics at Iowa State.

“We decided to concentrate on the spiritual side, ’cause that’s what we could offer,” Supple said. “So we had daily Mass and Sunday Mass, we had confessions every hour on the hour.

“All that was here was this junky old house, where the church is,” he said. “It was a granted that we didn’t have any money, you know, so we had church in the [Memorial] Union all the time and I said, `Some day, there on Lincoln Way, there’s gonna be a church.'”

The first ground for the new church was broken on Sept. 14, 1948, but “the old house” wasn’t torn down until 1953. Construction on the church began July 6, 1962, and it was dedicated by Archbishop James J. Byrne on Feb. 2, 1963. After 16 years of celebrating Mass in the Union and the basement of the unfinished church building, St. Thomas, named for the patron saint of Catholic education, was ready for students. Supple finally had his church.

Father Mel Hemann came to St. Thomas as an associate pastor in 1965. Hemann was impressed with Supple’s leadership and willingness to take risks.

“We were the first ones to do everything,” Hemann said. “[Supple’s] attitude was, `If it’s appealing to people, if it’s bringing them in, it can’t be bad.’ He was one to always stick his neck out.”

“I think being with young people that are willing to change made it much easier for me,” Supple said.

This willingness to change and experiment has been fundamental to the success of St. Thomas.

“People in the community are empowered to keep the mission going,” said Crystal Caruana Sullivan, campus peer minister. “I think that had something to do with his style.”

Supple’s uncanny ability to remember people and details about their lives was another key factor in creating the St. Thomas community.

“His memory now is not a third of what it was,” said John Donaghy, campus peer minister. “He would have the ability, when someone would come up and introduce themselves – maybe some student – would say where they were from and maybe the name of the parents. [He] would know the parents, would know what the parents majored in sometimes and would know when they were married.”

This skill is particularly impressive considering the 5,000 students that make up St. Thomas’ parishioners now, and the thousands of new students walking through the church doors every year.

“People can still come back here and still write here and still send money here because somebody here still remembers them,” Sullivan said. “People love him – both people here and people that are away.”

Supple’s impact on St. Thomas’ students has been especially evident during his medical problems in the past two years.

On Feb. 29, 2000, a car hit Supple as he was crossing one of the streets adjacent to Lincoln Way on his way to C.Y. Stephens Auditorium. He had turned 88 just two days earlier.

“He was beat up – really bloody – his head went through a windshield,” said Father Jim Hayes, associate pastor who came to the emergency room after the accident. “But here’s a guy just completely tattered, shards of glass in his face and everything else, blood all over the place, and he’s telling jokes to the ER staff as he’s lying there – unbelievable.”

Supple went to the emergency room again last April after developing an infection in the hip prosthesis he’s had since 1987. But the physical ailments weren’t his biggest obstacle in recovering – visitors were.

“They basically had to bar his door from everybody or he never would’ve gotten any rest,” Donaghy said.

With the help of a cane and physical therapy, Supple was able to start walking again and he hasn’t taken a break yet.

He continues to stay active in building and maintaining alumni relationships and student relationships. Monetary donations have been an important result of this, necessary gifts since the student center is completely self-sufficient and receives no funding from the diocese for its staff and programs.

In an effort to put these donations to good use, Supple established the Father James Supple St. Thomas Foundation. The organization provides scholarships for students at St. Thomas and also helped establish the Chair of Catholic Theology in the religion department at Iowa State, a million-dollar project that is one of the few in the nation.

“You’ve just gotta believe in dreams,” Supple said of St. Thomas today. “It’s been just marvelous the support we’ve got; it’s unbelievable. We have a wonderful tribute to the people who are in this parish.”

It is a tribute inspired by Supple and the memories and lessons he instilled in parishioners passing through St. Thomas’ doors. A tribute that continues today.

“I find it incredible that a 90-year-old man can relate so well to college students – I mean, they’re 70 years younger than him. The other night he was here and he came into the student center and there were a bunch of students there and he got to entertaining them. For about 15 to 20 minutes he went on and on with these little stories, a lot of them about his own life,” Everett Hemann said.

“[Students] just find that here’s a man who’s mentally so with it, they can trust, confide in, have fun with.”

And as today’s students continue to be amazed by Supple, they also continue to amaze him.

“Well, I think they’re just wonderful,” Supple said with conviction. “I just can’t get over those that go down and cook for the homeless people, you know.

“I just have to go back to believing it’s a miracle; I really do believe that God has been awesome. And the priests that he’s sent here now, you know, gad. And the people that we have, the enthusiasm that’s engendered, it’s just wonderful.

“If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve been so fortunate, just so lucky, that God has been awfully good to me.”